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A Different Kind of Detox

Happy New Year, all! It’s nice to be back into regular scheduled programing of life – kids back to school, holiday celebrations closed out, decorations packed away. Until next time!

I recently wrote a post on instagram summarizing my sentiments around the past year and for 2018 in a short, bite-sized social media morsel. Behind that post though, has been more reflection, taking stock and thinking about the future.

As many of you, I’ve been considering what I will commit to the coming year. I’ve abandoned the word “resolution” a few years ago, as it has never served me nor have I ever been successful at keeping them. Instead I’ve embraced the word of intention and the concept around a word “theme” for the year that is inspired through prayer and meditation.

Intention is more about “leaning in” – if you will – and not subjecting myself to a forced list of accomplishments. Instead an intention focuses on the present moment and about how I intend to live out things I believe in and value. I had to do some more digging to get clarity on the meaning of an intention vs. goal and here’s a great article from Oprah if you want to dig deeper.

When most people think of a detox, they think of juice cleanses, fasting, smoothies, and specific diets to clean out our bodies of a high toxic load that leads to illness and disease. And in a similar vein, my intention is to create a safe, healthy home for my family so that its a vibrant and happy place to live.

As I get deeper in my training at IIN (Institute for Integrative Nutrition), we’re covering all areas of lifestyle that impact our health including our environment – where we live and spend our days. My current focus on the home, most certainly has to do with the fact that we’re about to move to the burbs in a few weeks! And there is nothing like moving to a new home to establish new habits – studies support this theory and I’m taking advantage!

So to start, I’m focusing on an obvious area – the kitchen. To me, a healthy home is one that produces less waste and doesn’t contain toxic materials (specifically for my family and the environment). And just less plastic. Why? Because every single piece of plastic that is ever created remains on this earth – it never disappears. But it does appear in places like the ocean and therefore in our food (fish, etc) and too many other ways it’s harmful to our health.

What kind of simple steps can I take to live out this intention?

I’m using the “crowding out” concept to help me establish this habit – by adding in the stuff I want, to naturally crowd out the stuff I don’t want.